New iPhone rumors, a note ten review, well mine, Gmail does grammar check, and Roku makes it easier for parents to find stuff for their kids to watch. What's going on. I'm Rich Temiro. This is Rich on Tech, the podcast where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about, and it's also the place where I answer the questions that you send me, all with the help of producer Megan. Welcome to the show. How are you doing?
I'm doing well. How are you?
My day is not going so well, I know, and oh my gosh, this has not really happened to me in a long time. My computer I was working this morning writing a script and my computer all of a sudden I was in a Google doc and it just kept like crashing that web page and I was like, that's weird. Then all of a sudden, my whole computer crashes. That's weird. Then I go to log into my computer and my password doesn't work. So immediately I'm thinking, oh, no,
this is it. It's over. Yeah, and I restart my computer and then I get this little file folder with a question mark which that do we even know what that means? But it can't be good.
No, it does not look good. It does not look good. It doesn't look computer what. It's horrible.
That's it. It's just so I've restarted a couple of times and I'm going to do some more. I assume the hard drive is fried. And when you have yeah, I think so. I think it crashed. Why you don't know, It's just like it just hit a little sector in that drive. That's just like popped the whole thing to you know, oblivion. So we'll see from.
Throwing your laptop on the ground. Probably when you write your books.
When I step on it, Oh, good thing, the book is. Everything's in the cloud. Except I will tell you this. I am kind of sad. I've recently reforded, my reformatted my kid's iPad Parkers, and so I took all of his pictures off his iPad that he's been taking on his iPad, and I put him on my desktop and I was going to upload him back to his iPad or to Google Photos, but I have not done that yet. So if I do lose anything, that's I'll lose, which is
kind of sad. His memory, it's his memory, So yeah, it is kind of sad.
Okay, Well, hopefully that well say.
I'm being optimistic. We'll see, we'll see if I can save some of that stuff. But let's talk some tech. What do we want to start with? Do you want to do? What do you want me to start? Do you want me to start with the iPhone rumors? Or do you want me to start with my thoughts after using the Note ten for a week?
Honestly, iPhone rumor Oh.
Okay, I knew you'd say that, So let's start with the iPhone rumors. This does not come for me. This comes from Bloomberg Mark German. He is the expert on all things Apple. He has got some sort of mole inside the Apple organization that just gives him all this information. Here's what we're talking about in the next from the next Apple event, which is supposedly going to happen on
September tenth. That is not official, but that's kind of the date that everyone sort of agrees on because they've looked at the previous dates and the previous they don't want to do it on a September eleventh because that's kind of a weird date to do a big event on, although I think on year they did oh weird, and they don't want to do it on a Monday, although sometimes they do so. Anyway, long story short, the prediction is Tuesday, September tenth for the big Apple event.
Is there a lot of mystery just because they want everyone to be on their toes.
Apple never tells you until two weeks before, got it, and they send you the invitation and then everyone emails. So this is what happens. You get the invitation in your email and then every journalist tweets out a picture of the invitation, which has a little clue as to what you might see. Anyway, it's a whole big game with Apple, and I don't know how much longer it can go on, but it goes on.
It's still very exciting.
So three new iPhones. According to Bloomberg, they're gonna be called the iPhone Pro at least the upper models. Then there's going to be a successor to the iPhone ten are. The big new feature is a new camera system on the back with a third camera, and it's going to take wide angle pictures, ultra wide, and regular all at the same time. So when you snap a picture, it's theoretically snapping three pictures, which helps you go back and and recrop a picture. I think that will be useful sometimes.
I don't know if that's like always useful. But we've talked about this before, and so I remember we talked about like the wine glass being like right outside the picture and you wanted to recrop.
It or something. Yes, with your pictures, all my.
Pictures, low light photos are going to improve as well. Now you're a big iPhone fan, so is the low light thing like a big deal? Like you notice that when you take like pictures in the club or whatever.
No, I don't notice this at all.
Wait, what that low light pictures on the iPhone are just not very good? Yeah, Like they're pretty terri I don't take pictures, I know. I was just kidding about that.
Usually clubs have photo booths, so I.
Just okay, just take them there. So let's see what else. Significantly upgraded video recording capabilities. Already the iPhone has an amazing video camera on it, so I guess it's just going to get better.
Yeah.
They're also adding the reverse wireless charging, which we've already seen on the Samsungs, where you can put the wireless device on the back of the phone and charge it like another device. That's cool. The phones are going to look very similar to what they look like right now, except with the different cameras. The face ID is getting an improvement, so it would be multi angle. And this
is something that's actually pretty interesting. When you have your phone on your desk, you have to like lift it up to unlock it. You don't have face ID, so you don't have that problem. I'm stuck when you upgrade and then let's see what else. And the iPhone ten are, which I usually recommend, is like the phone to get for ninety nine percent of people that's going to get a second camera on the back so you can do
the zoom, you know, the optical zoom. And none of the phones will include five G. So there you have it, in a nutshell exciting. It's exciting, and they will sell a lot of them, but it is getting less exciting as the years go on. Because these phones are lasting for three years. People are not necessarily upgrading. I remember when when back in the day, when the iPhone come out, there's always a great, cool, amazing new feature on it.
Now it seems like we're seeing a lot of the features on the Samsung devices before Apple, So it kind of takes a little bit of the wind out of their sales. But the Apple people don't care because they're not using Samsung. So to them, it's new when they get a wide angle lens. It's brand new, right, even though I've been testing it on Samsungs for a year now.
It's it's funny too, because the changes used to be so big, Like it was like, you know, a little bit bigger of a phone, but like it was lighter, and like now.
It's just the print sensor, then a face ID. Now it's just like it's an iteration.
How's that? Yeah?
Okay, So starting off with the first question from Corone who writes in on your Facebook page, which is Facebook dot com slash rich on tech Corona Rights, do you have a few online sites you would recommend for writing and publishing my own books? I have multiple writings I've been working on over the past twenty years, and I finally have the courage to move forward and try to publish them.
Good question. Let's see, so I wrote a book, so this is a perfect question for me, and I used a lot of different websites and I'm just bringing them up in my computer right now. So the first one, this is the blog that I really used. I looked at a lot and there's a lot of websites about writing books. I mean there's a million blogs, and generally
what people do is they just search. Like when I was writing my book, I just search like the answers to what I needed at that time, like how to market my book and how to do this, how to do that, how to publish, how to print, how to you know, make a cover, how to do keywords on Amazon. But the one that I kept coming back to was Kindle Kindle preneur, I guess like entrepreneur except Kindle. Okay, so this is a great website. K I N d L E p r E n eu are Kindle preneur.
I don't know how you say that. That's it. But this guy named Dave is let's see, what's his name, Dave Chessin. That's a great website and it taught me a lot. He does it. It's very simple. Everything is very easy. But that's kind of like the number one website just kind of look at every day. The website that I used to actually create my book is called press Books, and they let you it's kind of like word Press, but for writing books. Very simple. Now I
say simple, it's simple at its heart. Formatting a book for print is not very easy and it takes a lot of trial and error. But this website is the best that I found. There's a lot of other software that can do it, but press books. To me, it's a little bit more expensive, but it really is nice. And by expensive I mean you don't have to pay until you actually publish it. You can do the whole thing for free. So if you write your whole book and you decide, eh, this is not very good, you
just don't use it. You don't have to pay. But once you do decide to actually export it in a format that can go to the Kindle or go to hardcover publishing or paperback publishing, you do have to pay. That's a great website. And then the other one, obviously is Kindled Direct Publishing. This is Amazon's way that you can get your book in on the Kindle or as a paperback in the Amazon Store, and it works fantastically.
And that's what you used for your last book.
That's what I used for my book one hundred and one Handi Tech Tips for the iPhone. I published it all by myself, no external help, and it was great. It did really well. It was it exceeded my expectations. And of course, now you know, I'm writing the next book, Yes, one hundred and one Handy Ticktips of the iPhone. I was thinking of some new titles, so I'll tell you some of the titles. So I was thinking iPhone, what was it? Unlocked the iPhone?
I was thinking, okay, I like that.
Then the other one was just handy tech tips for the iPhone. Drop the one on one because it's a mouthful. Let's see what else.
I thought you had one oh one iPhone.
Something oh iPhone one on one. I was thinking, yeah, So anyway, those are some of the things.
Exciting.
Yeah, it's exciting when I don't.
Know I have right now, I've written sixty something tips those last forty that I'm kind of not struggling with. But it's definitely like, okay, this is this takes some effort because don't forget, I put a lot of the best tips in the first two books, so I need to decide if I'm gonna include some of those in the next book. Yeah, make it kind of like a one stop shop, or if I have to make it like new tips, And then you have to go back to the old book for the old tips. I don't know.
I'm still still kind of figuring that out.
Yeah, it's excited.
All right, Well let's talk about the Note ten. You know, I've been using this for the past week or so, and it is a really nice phone. It's a really I think the way I would sum up this review is big. This phone is big in every way, like the features, the size. It is a really nice phone. It's not a phone that I personally will use. I used it for the week and that was kind of enough for me. And that's not to say this is a bad phone. I think that it's a very nice phone.
I just don't know if it's for everyone.
Yeah.
In fact, I think that ninety nine point nine percent of people will be better served with the Samsung Galaxy S ten plus if they're thinking about this phone. The only reason really to get this device is if you want the stylus. And if you have no use for a stylus, why are you getting this. That's kind of my thesis. The cameras are nearly identical. I can't see
any improvement in the cameras over previous Samsung devices. In fact, I'm actually kind of kind of mad at Samsung because the cameras used to get so much better with each Samsung, and now I feel like they've gotten to this point where they're not very good. Whereas the iPhone, when we went from even iPhone ten to iPhone ten s, the camera's significantly improved. I'm talking really improved, and with the Note ten plus, I don't see that improvement, which kind
of makes me sad. Yeah, the other things to know about this phone is that it is big. Did I say that it's big. It's big and using the spen. So the main things that they're trying to sell in this new phone is that it has a lot of features for video and audio, and I think that's great, But is it really going to become the creator's device of choice. I don't know. I still think that the iPhone's easier to use when it comes to video and audio.
I still think the camera is a little bit slower on the Note than it is on other phones that I test, which kind of annoys me. Again because this is Samsung. I do think that Samsung did their homework and stuff like the live focus video is really cool, but how often are you going to use that, probably not very long. Often that's the video gives you the blurry background. This whole thing about the depth vision camera
which lets you three D map things. Remember, on the stage they showed I don't know if you watched the presentation, but they showed like them three D scanning a little okay, stuffed animal. Who's really going to do that after the first time you ever do that? No one, No one's three D scanning their stuff. Super Steady's really cool, we had that before. Screen recorder's cool, but you can download an app to get that. The video editor is cool
and it's great for like very small use cases. But if you're actually going to create videos for social media and the web, you're probably going to download an app like Adobe Rush to do that. And so their video editing that they put on there is really cool, but it's very basic. It's very simple, and I think that most people who are making videos for a living or for social media will be better served with Adobe's program, which by the way, costs ten dollars a month, but
it's on there. But if you have a Samsung Galaxy No, you can get it for eight dollars a month for a year. Oh which is kind of nice. Wow, ar doodle, you're never going to use after the first time, you know where you saw me with a little cowboy hat on you like you can kind of draw in three D on someone's video. How often are you gonna use that?
Like?
Almost never?
Don't they have that on Snapchat now?
I don't know. Maybe don't know what the kids are doing on Snapchat And the rest of the stuff. All the integration with your computer, I think is really handy if you are on a Windows computer Windows PC, I think that stuff is pretty cool. But at this point, a lot of these things, you know, it's just it's a lot, and it's a good phone. It's an expensive phone. The screen is beautiful. I find that it's very big. Even after a week of use, it was kind of
tough to get used to. A couple of things that really annoy me are the power button is moved to the left side of the phone instead of the right, where it's much easier to get with your thumb. So I found myself like having to go reach over kind of get this thing activated, which I didn't like.
Why would they move it?
I don't know. The fingerprint sensor, I don't think is very good, although they did put out a software update that sort of improved it. Batteries amazing, camera is okay. I still think the iPhone takes better pictures in certain circumstances. I think that in bright circumstances, especially with like scenery and stuff, the Samsung does a better job. With people, I think that the iPhone does a better job. It just captures them better.
Interesting, and that's kind of it.
Any other questions you have, well, didn't you didn't it inspire you to buy a different phone?
Or do you not want to talk about?
Oh my god, you really put me out there. Yes, yesterday I bought a Pixel three XCEL because I had my hopes set on the Note ten and I thought that was going to kind of be my phone to use. And I realized that I don't. I'm not a big fan of the heavy handed approach to software that Samsung puts on their devices, and I just realized that I kind of like love the way Google's phones are pure. Yeah, and I kind of said this with the one Plus.
I just love the way it's very pure. But the one Plus camera is not as good as the Pixel. So I did buy the Pixel yesterday. Same day shipping on Amazon. I bought it in the morning and I got it by like six o'clock last night. I did not tell Lindsay that I purchased this, so why, uh well, it was a couple hundred bucks. So I just figured, how do you like it?
So far?
I love it. I'm the camera is just so good. So I just love the camera. It's not it's it's a stop gap until I get the pixel four probably right right, okay, But and I still have my iPhone, so I still have that, So I you know, I used, I used the best of all these worlds, you know, but I realized that I kind of missed the pixel camera.
Okay, So this next question comes from your email, which is by the way, Rich on tech dot Tv. You just go to his website and you can find a place to contact Rich and send in your question. This is from Pam. I think you had talked about a find my Watch feature that you could launch from your iPhone. Am I dreaming. I've looked in your book, but I think you talked about it in the last few months.
So there's a couple of things going on here. Find Number one, you have an app on your iPhone called find my iPhone or it's find my phone. I think now it's being changed to what's called find my Do you remember there's two apps on your phone. There's find my iPhone or find my phone, and then there's find my Friends. Yeah, those are being merged in iOS thirteen. Okay, it's becoming one app. So you open which makes sense.
You'll see your friends and you'll see.
Your devices devices. But it's two tabs at the bottom of the page. So you click one for your friends, you see them on a little map. You click one for your devices. Makes sense. You go to one place to find everything. Now you will see your Apple Watch on there if you're in a Wi Fi area and your Apple Watch is on, or it'll show you the last known location of your device. If you have a cellular watch, obviously it can show you where it is if it's somewhere you know, if you lost it in
the woods somewhere, it'll show you where it is. But the thing you need to know about this is a you have to activate it when you set up your device, like say find my So I always recommend people open up to find my Phone app and just make sure all your devices are sort of on there before you lose them, because once you lose them, you can't do
anything about it. So just make sure if you have an iPhone and an iPad, a MacBook, and an Apple Watch, go open up the Find my iPhone app and just make sure that those are listed there and there's not any problems if you don't see one of them. Set it up now. I think she's also confusing the feature that's on your Apple Watch that allows you to find
your iPhone. There's a pang feature, so if you swipe up from the bottom of your Apple Watch, you can find it looks like a little iPhone with two little kind of pings coming out of it, like a wave being omitted out of it. You press that and it will ping your iPhone and make a sound on your iPhone so you can find it around the house.
Okay, that might be it, because she does right. It was in parentheses and I'm just seeing it and can you tell I've lost my watch? So she must have lost her watch and she's trying to figure out how to trace it.
So she's gonna need the app. And the other place you can go, by the way is iCloud dot com slash find, and that will also give you a list of all your devices. But again, set this stuff up before. Just go to this right now if you have Apple devices, and make sure that your stuff is listed, because if it's not, you're not gonna be able to find it when it's actually lost.
And if your watch is dead, you won't find it.
No, but we did do that story on the guy who lost his Apple watch at sea and found it six months later someone else found it and when they charged it up, and here's why, you also want to put the lost message on it. When the guy charged up. The person who found this watch that washed up at sea, he charged it up. He went out and bought the charger right, charged up the watch, and then when it came to life, is said the person who owned it their name and phone number on the screen. He called
it and reunited it with its owner. Didn't ask for anything, Megan, You love auto correct?
Right?
Love it? Need it?
How many times has autocorrect messed up something for you?
When I try to write certain words, it'll change it.
To like duck.
Oh wow, Okay, maybe I shouldn't have say no, you're writing that word.
No, I mean, like you know, some words change and that's I wanted.
To say this, and for some reason they changed when you press send, like yeah, like you see it after you send it, and I'm like, wait, that's not what I wrote exactly. So now we need Gmail to do the same thing. And Gmail is now doing two things. They're going to check your grammar as you type, which is cool. I think that's great. I use a plug in called grammar ly which does the same thing, but
now it's going to be built in. I noticed that they built it into Google Docs because when I was writing my book, which I did not write in Google Docs last time, I wrote it in Apple Notes, but this time I'm writing it in Google Docs, and it's actually been a lot better because it corrects my grammar. I'm like, oh, wow, well, aren't.
You happy you're writing in Google Docs because with the crash of your.
Well notes would have been backed up. I backed it up in my cloud as well. Okay, but yeah, pretty much everything was backed up in my computer except Parker's pictures. It's all what a bad dad. So they're they're doing the grammar correction and instead of read squiggly lines, that will be blue squiggly lines. And the new thing that they're doing with spelling is that they're going to change right now. If you ever see spell check on Gmail when you're typing, it puts read squiggly lines, but it
doesn't change the word for you. What they're doing that's different is now they will start changing words that they sort of know are spelled wrong. So if you type weird the wrong way, which is like I always forget which way it's spelled, W E I R D, yes, okay, So if you type w I E r D, yeah, it will kind of know, oh, we know that's the
wrong Yeah, you're weird. It'll change that automatically, so it will auto correct okay, which I think could be kind of dangerous with work emails because I've seen the changes in the past with my texts, and if it does some of those things, it puts some words in there that you're like, I did not mean that, Like I've said, give me a sec it'll change it something else.
Oh my gosh. Yeah, so awkward.
It is awkward, especially when you're texting your mom.
Yeah sucks. Mom does not want to see that.
No, not fun anyway, So be aware of the blue squiggly lines and the red squiggly lines okay in Gmail. Oh, by the way, that's coming to the Gmail business users first, then they'll probably roll it out to the regular the rest of us.
Okay, cool, all right, Well, this next question comes from Penny and its subject is via SAT. Seeing ads on this new internet service called via sat.
Can you do a look see for us and let us know if it's a.
Viable alternative to in my case, the Ugly Verse, the few options.
Available out the Ugly Verse Ugly I had you Verse for many years. I had no problem with it. It was great. They were actually a sponsor of our program, and so I got them at home to make sure I used them and try them outside everything I had, Like at one point I had AT and T service, U Verse Internet and u Verse TV, and then I got Direct TV and it was fine. I mean, my u Verse was actually great back then. It was only twenty five down I think, but it was fine. I
never had any problem with it. Okay, So here is the thing about via SAT. I don't think, unless what's this person's Penny, Penny, Unless Penny lives in the middle of nowhere in a rural area, I don't recommend VIASAT Satellite Internet is not where it's at right now. It's just it's way too slow, the latency issues, and it's gotten better over the years, but I'm looking the bottom line is you are going to pay more for less. So if you look at these three speeds you've got.
The Bronze is up to twelve megabits per second for fifty dollars a month. Then it goes up to seventy dollars a month. That's really expensive. I pay seventy dollars a month for one hundred this is twelve Oh no, no, no, yeah, no, no, no, we can't have that. Recommended for most households is Silver, which is twenty five and that's one hundred dollars after three months. So again I pay that. I pay less for four times faster speed through cable. So bottom line,
Penny Viasat is not a good alternative. I would recommend going too high speed Internet dot com. Type in your zip code and see what your other option is. And does she give her zip code or where she's from?
Um no, no, okay, that's okay.
So the bottom line is you generally only have two providers, which is a cable company and a phone company. She's saying she's using the phone company. So check your cable company, which is either Spectrum, Frontier, Sentry Link one of these other companies, and see what the price is for the for the speed and you can switch from your verse. But unless you don't like their customer service or something like,
the service is not that bad. It's just you don't have many options when it comes to internet sactly.
It is sad.
Let's talk Disney Woo. Are you a Disney fan?
Oh my gosh, yes?
What what love Disney Princess? Would you be?
Well? Growing up, I was obsessed with Sleeping Beauty because she had blonde.
Hair, and so I was like, you know, you thought you were sleeping movies?
Thought I was.
I could ever fall asleep for a long time. What was Sleeping Beauty's deal? Did she fall asleep like by eating an apple or something.
She's the one who she.
Got bit by a spider, she had a curse.
Put on her.
Then she lived with her fairy godmothers in the forest, and when she turned sixteen, she would like fall asleep.
Wow, I got to watch that.
Yeah, you should have they done a remake of today?
Yeah? No, I don't think I ever saw Sleeping Beauty to be honest, or a Punzel or any Disney except Ariel. What's what's that? Little Mermaid? Little Mermaid and Beauty the Beast. I saw that. Yes, these are all the things. Oh this is a perfect segue into when I subscribe to Disney Plus, I'll be able to watch Sleeping Beauty because it will probably be honest.
Like one of the first Princess movies done by Walt Disney.
Disney Plus is set to launch on November twelfth. We've talked about this before, but the new news is that it might not launch on Amazon's fire TV, which a lot of people have. And the story goes that Disney confirmed they had this big announcement that hey, we're launching on all these platforms, and they mentioned in my name, Apple TV, iOS, Chrome Cast, Android, Android TV, PlayStation, Roku, Xbox.
Did not say a word about Amazon fireTV, And some of you might say, rich they mentioned Android and Android TV, that's what fireTV is based on. But no, fire TV is its own thing. Even though it's based on Android. We know. We went to the fireTV party in Las Vegas. Yeah, it's its own thing.
There is a Disney person there.
There was a Disney person there. He was just kind of like drinking and eating free food.
Yeah, exactly.
So the thing is, we still have some time before the launch in November. But I think that Amazon is like not making friends, Like they're really bad at making friends. If you remember, YouTube and YouTube TV were not on there for the longest time. They finally just made up and we got a YouTube app. I believe when DirecTV first launched, like they weren't on there, or maybe it was Roku one of them. But the point is Amazon makes some friends. Yeah, come on, because they had a
big feud with Apple. Remember all the Apple products weren't in their store for a while. Chrome Cast was out of their Amazon shopping for a while. They need to make friends with Disney, yes, because they need Disney Plus. People will switch platforms to get Disney Plus. If you have.
Kids, they will lose us.
You will switch to a Roku to get Disney Plus. If you have Amazon that I have, that's what you have. So you're good. Are you going You're not going to subscribe to this? You don't need this? I mean seven bucks a month? Why would you do that? Like, are you really that big into Disney?
No? I don't have kids, so I guess there's really no reason.
But as you like secretly like like you're like clicking go on your thing to like subscribe right now.
I mean I really just wouldn't need it, So, yeah, you don't need it.
But ABC shows that's true. The Bachelor will be on there, will it?
It is that'll probably be on Hulu.
Okay.
I have Hulu, so I'm fine, but you can get the bundle which they also announce Whi's gonna be thirteen dollars for Disney Plus, ESPN Plus and Hulu.
I don't have thirteen dollars to spare for that.
Well, how much you're paying for Hulu or are you already getting it for free right now?
How would I be getting it?
I don't know. Are you using someone's passwords? Oh no, no, no, okay, just making sure.
No.
Oh, I take that back. Let me do one more thing. Okay, since we are on the topic of kids and family the Roku. Speaking of Roku, they launched a kids in family section. It's called the Kids and Family on the Roku channel. And I will tell you what's so popular right now are these streaming services, but the free streaming services? People love free we're at a TV station that's free.
People love free. Who doesn't love free? So if you can get a Roku and what they've done is they've curated all this programming that's free, ad supported with commercials, but still you can go on there and watch stuff for free, kind of like YouTube, but like you know, TV shows. So Roku has kind of found this that people really like that, and other people are catching on. There's other services that do similar things, like Pluto TV.
There's also Amazon has a bunch of stuff that's not prime because you have to have a membership for that. But they have something called IMDbTV.
Oh okay, which.
I think was called freeview or something. They changed the name. Yeah, we did a story, but what was it called watch movies or Yeah? Was it freeview by Amazon? Uh No, I forget what they called it. I think it's called IMDbTV now they changed it on my they changed it on my service. Yeah, it used to be called free Dive. Now it's called IMDbTV, which makes more sense because that you understand what that means more IMDbTV. You're like, okay,
so that's free with ads. Anyway, on Roku, you can look for a new kids and Family section, which has a bunch of kids and family stuff that's free. And if you have any of the premium subscriptions to like HBO or Stars, all that stuff, well we mixed in as well. This is curated by humans, which is kind of nice, so you can just have your kids look at this and find it show they want to walk.
Wait, what do you mean if you have an HBO or Stars account, it'll be mixed in.
So if you are on Roku, you can subscribe to HBO and Stars through Roku, so they know that, and then they say, oh, well, since you're an HBO subscriber, we'll put Sesame Street from HBO on this kids and Family section because we know you can play that. And I also think they'll probably upsell you by saying like, oh, that's a show that you could be getting if you subscribe.
Yeah, totally.
The other thing they're doing is a pin number, so now you can do a pin code to It's like a parental control, which is really smart because I told you Tanner bought three episodes of Bubble Guppies all by himself on my fire TV. Oh my that and I was gonna call Amazon to like, you know, dispute the charge, and I was like, you know what, I can't it was my fault, like I left this thing open for him. Yeah, and thank god it was just that. But it was pretty funny when I saw that. I was like, how
do you buy these? And he goes and he showed me. He goes, Dad, I just did this, and he showed me the exact thing he said. It said two ninety nine. I was like, oh my gosh, these kids these days.
That's money, all right, switching gears. This next question come in from Perl. She writes, you did a piece on how to back up desktop to external hard drive? Can you explain how to do this? How often do you need to back up a desktop every night? Two times a week, once a week.
Well, if you're me, yesterday yesterday, So it depends on which kind of computer you have. If you now, this is what I think. It's kind of funny because so much of what we're doing is in the cloud. So my computer where the hard drive just crashed, I'm not worried about anything that's on there because everything's in the cloud. I've got Google Drive, I've got my photos and Google Photos.
I've got iCloud for all the other stuff, I will say, one thing I will be turning back on with iCloud is my desktop upload because on iCloud you could turn on where it sinks your desktop to the cloud on your Mac computer. I will be turning that back on because his photos were on the desktop. If I would have had that turned on, all his photos would be an iCloud. Really sad that I didn't have that turn on.
But when it comes to bat backing up your computer, you can use a time machine on your Mac, which is super easy. You have you ever used this. You plug in a hard drive, you flip a switch, and boom, it just backs up and that does its own backup. It does it like every every like I don't know, like every ten minutes. It like just keeps pushing the backup like it just deletes the old one and just keeps doing it as long as your computer's on and the hard drive's plugged in. That's really easy. And then
on Windows it's the same thing. You just literally go to your control panel system and maintenance and then backup. You pop a hard drive in. It formats that hard drive and it just keeps putting the backup on that drive as long as it's attached to your computer. So with a desktop computer, it's pretty easy just leave your your hard drive attached the external that you use to
back up. On a laptop, it's a little trickier because you're not always going to have that plugged in, so it's more of like you have to remember, I would say, depending on how much stuff you store on your computer hard drive versus a cloud, that's how often you should
back it up. If you're doing work every day from home and writing a book that's stored on your hard drive, you want to back that hard drive up every day, Yeah, every hour practically, But if you're not, if you're doing stuff like me, like I get a little note on my computer, which, oh maybe I backed it up since then? Oh oh maybe I did, because I do use time machine, so maybe it's on my backup. Oh I'm gonna check that when I get home. But it's been nagging me.
It's been saying, like, you haven't backed up in like three hundred and eighty four days.
That's what mine says.
It's been a while, but we know we don't need it as much. Yeah, yeah, realistically, what are you gonna lose?
Just like all my memories from college, which is fine.
Do you really not have those backed up? Actually, in your case, those will probably be better to lose.
No, no, no, I have everything backed up. But to be completely honest, I so like I backed up my laptop from from college and then deleted all the pictures.
Oh it makes sense.
No, all the pictures on my computer.
No, I saved it on the on the on the hard drive. But then like when I try to go and look at the pictures, it's like so so difficult to find.
Here's what you do. Just take all those pictures and drag and drop them into Google Photos. Or do you not use Google Photos?
I do?
Oh, drag and drop them into Google Photos.
Okay.
And then with Google Photos, do you have do you pay the monthly?
I do?
Yeah, yeah, because you might as well since you'll get the because it's either.
Free yes, at us at a quality a certain quality, high quality, or it's unlimited at the regular quality like the quality you took them in. I'll be honest for your pictures from from college. You no, I think the high school too, Yeah. I think they'll be fine with the with the regular quality, like the quality that they get for free. They'll be fine. Yeah, because the pictures
weren't big enough. If only you only need the better quality if you're taking it does up to twelve megapixels for free, So unless your camera was over twelve, you really don't need to worry about it. Which your camera back in the day. I know it's only a couple of years ago.
But iPhone, yeah, like three years ago.
I don't think iPhone has gone over twelve megapixels yet. Oh, I don't think it's ever like it. Maybe maybe it's sixteen for the newest I see iPhone tens megapixels. They don't even talk about the megapixels on the cameras anymore. It's yeah, they don't twelve meg Yeah, it's a he's been twelve.
Okay, well that's what I'll do.
Did you ask a question? Yeah, you did, and.
You answered it. You just said basically, I.
Said, basically your sol No, I'm just kidding, that's me. Good luck. Have you applied for your Apple card yet, Megan? No, are you going to?
No?
Well, I wanted to. When it first came out.
You were very excited about this. Yeah, a lot of people are getting them. It's the Apple Card, and you know that I'm not a huge credit card person, even though I have a credit card. I do listen to Dave Ramsey and he says no to credit cards. I try to do that, but it's really tough. Yeah, credit cards are just convenient. I feel like they're more secure when you're buying stuff online. Although I did buy something
from Target today and I use my debit cards all scared. Well, it's just I feel like once that number's out there, it's my general rule of thumb is I tell you this, if my card is leaving my hand, I give a credit card.
That's like one of your best tips.
It's a good tip, right, Yeah.
I always think about that.
And it's true because like you put your card out in a restaurant and it's like, I'm not saying these people are always stealing it, but it just feels better knowing, like if they steal a credit card, it's fine, Like you get a new one, you call Chase, you tell them like, hey, my number got stolen. If it's your debit card, it just feels different because like your money's out of your account totally. And then I was thinking, like how much money can they get out of your
account in one day? Like I used to have a limit on my ATM withdrawal, like five hundred dollars a day. So I was like, okay, well from your checking account, from my checking account, right. So I don't know if that's still there or if they like increase that over time. But I always wonder, like, if you lost your debit card, what's the max someone can spend on it before you get they get cut off.
Yeah, that's why I keep my checking at zero.
Yeah. I was gonna say that's why I don't keep much I do. I have a separate account for just my debit card, so I don't keep it as part of my regular just because it's like separate money.
Yeah.
Anyway, Yeah, So the Apple Card works through the iPhone. Everyone can apply for at this point, not that I'm recommending that you will apply. I don't think this is the best credit card out there. I do think it's fun. I do think it's convenient if you have an iPhone. I think it's kind of cool. It's very high tech. You get this cool Platinum card in the mail. It's
all free. You get three percent back on anything you use anything you purchase from Apple, which includes your iPhone payment or your iPhone purchase and also any apps, app Store, iCloud, all that good stuff. You get two percent cash back on anything that you use tap to pay to buy. So if you're using your phone at the checkout, you tap it to pay, you get two percent, and you get one percent on any time you're using the physical card, which a lot of credit cards out there, you can
get two percent on the physical card. But I'm not here, I'm not the points guy. I'm not trying to tell you how to like hack the system get all the points. I'm just saying this is a fun, inconvenient card to have. I kind of like some of the tech aspects of it, especially how you pay the bill. You use this slider. So let's say you can't pay the whole bill one month.
You can use a little slider and it shows you, like, if you can only pay five hundred out of one thousand dollars, how much your interest is going to be. And if you slide it a little bit more, it'll be like, well it would be twenty five dollars interest, or if you pay a little bit more, be twenty twenty dollars. So that's kind of cool.
Oh sweet, Okay, we'll just try and understand the interest, like that, what's the APR.
Well, it depends. Everyone's saying it's not the best APR either. Apparently it depends on your credit got it?
So okay.
The other thing it does is I think it's kind of cool is it shows you the actual name of the place that you purchase from. So with US, a lot of times you purchase from these little random places with your debit card and it just says like MCO Enterprises and you're like, what the heck is that? This cross references it with Google, with Apple Maps and gives you the actual name. So, especially with gas stations, a lot of the times, yeah, they don't say the name.
This will be like Exon on you know, West third Street, you know, so you know that it's a place. The other thing that's kind of funny about this is Apple released a support document called how to clean your Apple Card because this thing is white, and it says you can gently wipe it with a soft, slightly damp, lint free microfibercloth. As a second step, you can moisten the microfiber with alcohol and wipe again, but don't use household cleaners.
Compressed air aerosol, spray, solvents, ammonia, or abrasives. And they say should keep it in a wallet, pocket or soft bag away from hard objects.
And you're not supposed to wear it with like leather pants.
Yeah, no, leather and denim, so it could permanently discolor it. Don't put this in your pocket by itself.
Well, at least it's not like blowing up or something that'd be that'd be terrible.
All right, So this next question.
This is it is your last question, Megan, make it a good one.
Marty writes in My husband and I are going to be in Greece, Italy and Spain next month.
Oh I'm jealous.
Yeah, nice life, Yeah, Marty, cool Marty.
We will be using our iPhones with the Wi Fi at our hotels. Should we get a VPN app?
Do we need it?
And if so, which ones do you recommend?
I don't think you need a VPN app. Yeah, I've traveled around the world without. I do have one, but I don't use it, and I've traveled everywhere with my phone.
Yeah.
The reason why you don't need it is because if you're going to China, I would say yes. If you're going to Russia, I would say yes, if you're going to country like that, yes, But if you're going to a country like Italy, where else is this? Are they going on this Spain wanderlust? Oh my gosh, Greece, Spain. Yeah, these countries, you'll be fine with just using the Wi Fi that's provided. You'll be fine with using your internet
connection on your phone if you have that enabled. But I don't think you need to worry about this too much because these countries are not in the business of like intercepting your communications. And most of the time, I mean, Marty, what are you gonna be doing. You're gonna be checking your email, You're gonna using Google Maps, You're gonna be using secure websites that work through a secure layer already,
You're not really gonna have to worry about it. The only thing I do recommend is if you are checking your bank account through your phone and you are on Wi Fi, I would switch to the cellular connection so that you're not going through a public Wi Fi connection. Now, if you can't do that, I would recommend using a Wi Fi or a VPN. To recommend one, I mean, there's like Nord I think is a good one. I think there's just so many of them. Just do a
free free trial of one of them. You can go in the app store and just find like a free trial of some of these. But I think private, I think what is it? Private VPN is like one of the big ones that people like. Yeah, private VPN. So if I had to recommend one, I'd probably say check out private VPN. Cool.
Cool.
All right, that's pretty much it for the time, I know. Can we come with you?
Yeah?
Let me just tell you one more thing. If you're thinking of getting Spotify, this is going to sound like an ad, but it's not. But if you're thinking of getting Spotify, starting now, you can get your first three months for free when you sign up for Spotify Premium used to be one month for free. Have you taken advantage of that?
Well, I've had it first.
Oh you've had Spotify? Yeah? Did you pay the ten dollars a month?
I have the family plan? Okay, so it's fifteen for.
Like five people, for a lot of people. I did have that, and I was giving my mom accessed I tell you this story, yeah, to cut her off because I got rid of it because I got Apple Music for free.
So does she get Apple music.
No, she's been using YouTube music for free on her Google home and she says, not as good as Spotify. And I'll get her I think for her good son, I know, I think that her birthday or for Christmas, I will get her a year's worth of Spotify. I'll pay like the ninety nine bucks and just that'll be like a nice gift. Because she's really she won't say
it because she's so like nice, but she won't. But anytime I ask her, like, how has has it gotten any better with the YouTube music, She's like, well, not really. I mean it doesn't play this stuff as good as Spotify. So anyway, you can get three months of Spotify Premium. So you've been if you've been wondering what it's like to live that premium lux life, that lifestyle that Megan
enjoys with no ads. Download music to listen offline, play anything you want anything, listen on any device, Skip the songs you don't like, and.
Download this podcast on Spotify.
Rich on Tech, rich on Tech just search for it in there. What song are you listening to on repeat these days? Last time it was Zora Larson. Has that changed? Wait?
That's so weird that you say that.
Because she has a new song, because she has a well.
It's not new, but it's new to me. I'm playing all the time.
That's what it's called all the time.
You're playing all the time, all the time, all the.
Time, all the time.
Love it?
And what else? There's this Snoop Dogg song that I think is so good.
It's called Oh I heard this.
I think it's so.
Good and I don't know why everyone's not obsessed with it.
It's new? Is it the California One?
Yeah?
Wait, it's not coming up.
Okay, you look for that. You look for that while I talk about the end of the show. Thanks so much for listening to the rich on Tech podcast. You can find us on iTunes, it's not even called iTunes anymore, Apple podcasts. You can find us on pocket casts. You can find us on overcast, basically wherever you listen to podcasts. Please listen, because our job's here at KTLA depend on it.
Yeah.
Please do they know I'm just kidding, but they could. Yeah, you never.
Now.
We do appreciate you listening. If you have a question for the show, you can just go to rich on Tech dot tv, hit the contact button button, and you can send in your question that way, or you can find me on Facebook, Facebook dot Com, slash rich on Tech, Instagram at rich on tech, and also Twitter, but I probably won't answer you there. Sometimes I just ignore it because it's so much. There's so much.
Notifications, so popular.
See what it's like on my phone. I shouldn't.
I should use your phone for a day and see what it's like to be you, not my new one.
The song, yeah, it's called Countdown, Countdown. It's really good. I think it's really good.
Listen to countdown and I think that's it. Do you enjoy the show?
I enjoyed the show.
Where can people find you?
On Twitter?
Producer Megan is the handle. I'm also on Instagram, but it's not that exciting.
It's just it's a lot tougher to find you there.
Monogle, it's a it's hard to.
Say, all right, spell Thanks so much for listening. My name is rich Demiro rich on tech dot TV. We will talk to you real soon. Bye bye,